It turns out that average temps in the Tahoe region took a sudden jump in the 1980s–right after they built the tennis courts nearby. And when the local custodian started burning trash in the adjacent trash barrel–you guessed it, nightime temps skyrocketed.

Watts recently brought to light that the reason historical temperatures appear to be so high in recent decades is that the number of temperature monitoring stations has doubled since the 1950s. So they’re not really comparing apples to apples.

Science used to be about rigorous data collection. The photo above doesn’t look to rigorous to me. Sometimes its better to go see with your own eyes what’s going on in the field rather than just sit in a dimly lit room reading what other people in dimly lit rooms are typing on their computers. That’s what scientists used to call “observation.”

[2] Anthony Watts has found the NOAA temperature recording station near Lake Tahoe: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/13/apparently-goverenor-brown-youve-never-visited-the-weather-station-at-lake-tahoe/